Belgian Woman Returns After 7 Years with ISIS in Syria, Faces Terror Charges

Today the mother of four children, Fatiha explains the reasons that led her to join Syria in 2015 and to marry two fighters. Her first three daughters were born in this war-torn country, under the yoke of terrorist groups. But she claims not to have lived in a conflict zone. "We lived in a quiet region each time. I was able to hear bombings in the distance," she explains during her appearance before the Brussels criminal court. Fatiha is being prosecuted for participating in the activities of a terrorist group, reports Sud Info.

The young woman recounts that she went to Syria to meet a young Brussels resident, Faris, who joined the ranks of Jabat Al-Nosra, a group affiliated with Al-Qaeda, in Syria since 2012. The two young people have known each other since their youth and seemed to have a budding romantic relationship before Faris’ departure for Syria. The young man had been trying since 2013 to convince Fatiha to join him, but the young woman did not approve of his affiliation with the Islamic State and felt that he "took the wrong path," she explained on Thursday before the court.

But after two years, she decides to join Faris. "He had promised me that I could come back at any time. I felt betrayed by his promises. I quickly realized that I had made a mistake," she develops. A year later, Faris dies on the front line in Idlib, a city in northwestern Syria, while Fatiha was already seven months pregnant. The young woman finds herself alone in this war-torn country. She says she was taken in by Syrian friends through whom she meets her second husband. With the latter, she had two children before deciding in November 2020 to leave Syria for Turkey.

Two years later, Fatiha is pregnant again and decides to return to Belgium and take responsibility. The young woman had been sentenced by default in May 2018 to five years in prison. "Of all the convicted women by default, she is the only one to have benefited from conditional release upon her arrival in Belgium," indicates the standing magistrate, stressing that the defendant surrendered herself to the authorities, shows no signs of radicalization or risk of recidivism according to psychiatric experts. For these reasons, she should not be sent back to prison, hope the defense and the federal prosecutor’s office who wish for a probationary suspension of the sentence or a conviction to four years in prison with a suspended sentence. Fatiha will be informed of her fate next month.